Not Immortal
by Pontificator
Summary: [KakaRin][RinYon][KakaSaku] Apparently, history doesn't just repeat itself. It comes in vicious cycles. [Multichapter, WIP]
1. Emergency Room

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto.

**A/N:** I'm following "The Great Naruto Timeline," which can be found in the Library section of the forums at Narutofan. "B.K." stands for "Before Kyuubi," and "A.K." stands for "After Kyuubi," referring to the pivotal point in time that the Kyuubi attacked the village.

**Spoilers:** …Everything (especially Kakashi Gaiden) except the new arc with Sai.

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Chapter 1: Emergency Room / In which Rin reveals her love

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"_O, swear not by the inconstant moon, th' inconstant moon/That nightly changes in her circled orb/Lest that thy love prove likewise variable" (Romeo and Juliet II.ii.114-116)._

_------_

_March 28, 1 B.K. _

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A languid, lucid moon tailed the flash of silver hair tearing through the forest far, far below. Panting hard and harsh and heavy with exhaustion, the owner of the hair the same shade as its stalker was a fair-skinned boy no older than fourteen. From somewhere around his frantic feet came a whine. A grouch-faced dog nipped at the boy's pants with a gentle tug, and the boy halted; craned his neck and stared down at the lolling tongue.

"Kakashi," the dog growled. "The other way."

The boy nodded. He reached back to slide a kunai from his vest, and in an impossibly-fluid motion, pricked his finger without hesitation. Swiping the bubble of blood on rough bark that intensified the slight throb, he muttered a technique before blurring into the trees once more.

Behind him pitter-patted the steps of fleet hunter-nins a hairsbreadth away from the boy's speed.

------

Cherry blossoms drift in aching spirals. Beneath the shrouded moon, life is frozen. In the morning, lamb-soft leaves will unfurl and a stubborn shrub will add another hint of a millimeter to its height.

It's spring.

------

A pale girl flies to the Konoha Hospital, chakra in her bruised feet—they're aching from each anxious leap. Her face is thin with stress and her sleeves hang too loose on her wiry arms. She's one of two survivors of her old genin team—and very soon, if this next lunge doesn't bring her that much closer to the hospital, she may be the only survivor. It's a team that became "old" about six months past.

Her team had promised greatness. There had been the jounin-leader, a rapid yellow blaze that had inspired fear among Konoha's enemies. There had been the Uchiha, who hadn't been the most talented of that illustrious clan, but had been an Uchiha. There had been the Hatake, son of the White Fang—a man on par with the legendary Sannin. And there had been the pale girl, whose talent for medicine began rumors of "the next Tsunade."

The pale girl's name is Rin.

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The emergency room's door slams into the wall and chips it. Rin stands in the doorway, eyes wide and voice lost. And then she reaches for the red-drenched figure in a mass of white sheets, sitting there with his hands folded and head down. Rin's strides are uneven and awkward, but she manages to be at the beaten form's side in an instant.

"Kakashi," she says. He doesn't look up. "Kakashi!"

Kakashi raises his head to peer at her, disturbing eyes unsteady. "Rin?"

The scene is wrong. Kakashi doesn't belong here. He belongs to winter's iciness, not here in his gashed, bitter state, where outside the walls blooms a serene spring.

Rin's close to crying—she bites her lip to stop its trembling—and the image in front of her stabs with less mercy than a kunai.

Red trickles down every rivet and facet of his body, escaping from the cuts that travel his body like a pattern. His hair's limp and matted, rain the scent of salt and something tangy—_blood_—dripping from each strand. The hands shake, and the fingernails are ripped and ooze black and raw. A bone protrudes from his left calf, and on his right knee the skin's gone, leaving only a dirtied kneecap. Kakashi, broken.

Rin clenches the fabric of her medic's apron and breathes in. Tsunade's not here to work her almost-magic skills. Shizune's not here either. It's as if there's been an exodus of Konoha's best—beginning with Tsunade and ending with Jiraiya, with the bastard Orochimaru taking his welcome leave somewhere in the middle.

Someone offers her a wet towel. She silently accepts and cleans her hands. There's nothing but the scent of antiseptic and metal—but she can't smell the metal carried on the red, she _won't_.

She dips her hands into the thick dark warmth and, praying for a miracle, jolts chakra through the torn body. The tattered form writhes with the impact, and the eyes snap open. A wretched wild cry emits from the cracked lips. Sheets rip. Bars shriek. Pans clatter to the floor, and the clanging draws medic-nins in like a bright red flower attracts a bee. Except in this case, it's the bees that will be stung.

Her medic's apron now splattered with the rust of death, Rin gasps at them to leave—but not before a shuriken is flung into an attendant's arm. He yells, more in shock than pain, and they exit in a hurry, but not before one casts Rin a nervous glance. They don't think she can handle the flailing person beneath her hands. She frowns at the woman and the woman leaves. They aren't capable of even a fraction of what Rin's doing now, and part of her wonders if _she's_ capable. But all Rin knows is that she'll heal Kakashi (she tries not to let herself remember that there are some wounds she can't heal)—or die in the effort.

She is _not_ going to be the only survivor.

"Don't," someone's hoarse voice says. Startled, Rin's eyes blink open. She's been closing them to block out the horrid sight, but she'll convince herself later that they were screwed tight in concentration.

"Not—worth it."

If Rin wasn't so intent on saving Kakashi, she'd slap him. But her hands are soaked in his blood and there's a stream of chakra running from her fingertips into his veins and is it too much to ask that she isn't the only one who makes it past thirteen?

Rin's not the type to swear, but she's damned near, and as Kakashi's eyes close and his head lolls back, she presses all the chakra she can muster into his limp body, a frantic curse screaming in her mind.

"Live, Kakashi," she pleads. The tears she's been straining to hold back shove through and soon her eyes see nothing but a death-smeared watercolor. There's an ache in her head, and the white walls turn gray. The gray edges on black. She's passing out. Minutes pass as her head falls until her hair mixes with his blood.

And with a sudden shudder, Kakashi's mouth opens and his lungs contract. He raises his head and stares at Rin. She holds her breath and waits.

"Don't ever do this again," he says.

Rin withdraws her hands and reaches over the wound she's just healed—now Kakashi's newest scar—for a cloth. Rin's silent; she doesn't know what to say. How do you apologize for bringing someone back to life? For denying a person's death wish?

Kakashi's eyes are red and black and they're not covered by his forehead protector. That metal object that shields Kakashi from reality sits on a metal cart. The cart those jittery medic-nins would've loaded the dead body on. Rin finds it hard not to look away from his steady gaze until he says,

"You don't need to feel obligated."

_Just because I'm a teammate_ are the tacit words, and they ring low and harsh in Rin's ears like the voice of a cracked bell.

"Kakashi…" she says. She's begging now; begging this stranger whose eyes spin cold.

There's nothing else to do but to keen a desperate "I love you" to his stiff face. It's her only explanation for what she's done. If she were brave enough, she'd bend forward to kiss those bleeding lips and _prove_ it to him, but she's not—she's just thirteen—and so she watches him and tries not to cry when his eyes arc in mirth.

Don't laugh, she wants to blurt, but it's too late. A weak chuckle comes from those lips she would've kissed.

"You're too young to know love," Kakashi tells her. "Go home and rest."

Is that anger in his voice? If there is, Rin ignores it. Instead, she remembers the way an enemy had looked after Kakashi's shuriken had neatly sliced her into symmetrical pieces. How that enemy's brother had whimpered like a dog after Rin had pierced his lungs and collapsed his trachea. Or even how it sounded when the last of the enemy's team had shrieked after Kakashi had torn out his spleen and wrenched out his heart and stabbed out his eyes. Rin recalls the blood-marinated feast that had lain there for scavengers.

"If we're old enough to maul other ninjas in battle, then we're old enough to love," she whispers.

Kakashi says nothing.

Rin's voice rises. "Just now, you were an inch away from death and no one could bring you back but a thirteen-year-old medic-nin who got her first period last month!"

There's no response. Kakashi's fallen back into his naturally quiet self, and Rin sees him studying her with that expression he wears when he's memorizing a complicated technique.

And Rin loses herself in despair that—He can't see. That he _won't_ see because of the untalented Uchiha—Obito. Because it's that untalented Uchiha's eye he carries.

Rin strides out hiding her tears because she knows that that if Kakashi sees them, all he'll do is scrutinize her like she's a baffling specimen.

------

"I love him," Rin tells the Hokage.

The Yondaime Hokage is a man known as the "Yellow Flash" to his enemies and "that sweet dear" to his villagers. Rin knows him as her former teacher, the jounin-leader they'd had when her team had been mutilated beyond recognition. But that's wrong. Kakashi had been the jounin-leader for that particular mission. Everything leads back to Kakashi.

"I know," her once-teacher murmurs. His voice is clear and warm like a summer wind.

Rin's blunt nails dig into the desk at her waist. "But he doesn't."

There's a rawness cutting through her sweet tone, and it ages this girl by a decade.

Blue eyes widen and a hand extends towards her. Rin stares blankly at the half-moons she's made on the wood beneath her hands. She closes her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she says after a moment.

The Yondaime smiles, though there's worry in those new lines around his eyes. "Don't be."

Rin takes a breath. "Do you think he'll ever love me?"

Her former jounin-leader pauses, then says, "He already loves you." But it's a pause too long and Rin's too smart not to recognize an indirect answer when she hears one.

For the answer is no. Not the way you want him to.

"I see," Rin replies. She offers him a bitter parody of a grin, tears falling into her smile. "Thank you."

Rin turns and walks out the door.

* * *

The moon shone bright like the bloated belly of a pregnant woman. It was a night for lovers.

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Questions? Comments? Reviews appreciated. 


	2. Cherry Tree

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto.

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Chapter 2: Cherry Tree / In which Sakura reveals her love

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_"There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery" (Lord Jim; ch. 24). _

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_March 28, 16 A.K._

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The moon rises, slim and lovely, the curve of her pale cheek a beacon against the dark backdrop of her hair that spans an infinity. Night has crept up and now curls around the earth of leaves and shadows and trees, a luxurious panther with eyes shut tight.

Beauty, black and velvet, yawns through the streets, a thick shimmer on the still forms of resting villagers. Stars glitter as ornaments above a cherry tree that bends an elegant arc into the sky, branches smooth and leaves coiled.

There are no buds on this tree.

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A pale girl, whose eyes flash bright and hair flashes brighter, raps on the door of her former teacher's apartment. She stands on his doorstep, a cold and lonely-lost nearly-woman—with a face set in frigid calm. Her name is Sakura, for the cherry blossom, and at sixteen, she fits her name like the recent-bought kimono left at home stretches tight about her hips.

Bristle-brush gray hair greets her as the door opens, and a heavy eyelid rises.

"Sakura," the man says. "It's nice to see you."

Sakura smiles to herself. She knows it's well past midnight—well past the hour when decent people sleep. She knows that _he_ knows. But apparently, he isn't going to make a fuss.

Ninjas are not known for being decent people.

"It's nice to see you too, Kakashi…" Sakura says, and drifts off meaningfully.

As Kakashi grins, Sakura sees that the face mask doesn't stretch as far as she remembers. Either her memories are blurring, or Kakashi's strained. But then, it's been a while since his only female student—the only one to remain safe and secure in Konoha—has paid a visit to his one-room apartment. This time, a frozen pink flower alone and cold on his doorstep, there is nothing to excuse her.

"Yes, Sakura?"

Sakura sighs. Kakashi's still as difficult as she remembers. And if the last time she saw him, head bent and eyes closed in the field of death, serves as any proof—He hasn't grown. He's still the same man whose heart is tied to the grave of Konoha's ninjas.

"May I come in?"

Without a word, Kakashi creaks open the door—too lazy to oil the hinges, Sakura thinks—and moves to set a dusty kettle on a dustier stove.

"Tea?" he asks, and receives a nod from Sakura.

Stark blank walls as gray as Kakashi's hair box in a room that seems as if it hasn't been a home since before the Second War. A ratty blanket carries in its threads a dim, washed-out shade of Sakura's eyes and a trim of worn shurikens. It lies on a suspiciously-clean white bed. And white is the second-most prevalent color in the room, gracing the solitary pillow, the chipped rice-cooker, and the sheets that bear slight crumples with a distasteful flair. There's a cracked table, a scarred floor, and the smeared, scratched-up ceiling looks as if Naruto had painted it.

According to Sakura's calendar, that bold blond on that happy head's been gone two years, three months, and sixteen days. Sakura's counted—she dots each day off with a neat red pen—and she misses those yellow spikes. Naruto is her dream, her hope, her only chance for peace and yet the very trigger of disaster, and if he dies, she'll be the last of her team, but—

Naruto's nothing compared to Sasuke.

Sasuke was her dream, her hope, her only chance for peace and yet the very trigger of all disaster.

He was her heart.

The hem of Sakura's dress curls around a sharp-edged foot of the knee-high table. It's an understated work of red medium-cost cloth, but it's cut slim and low enough to arouse—if Kakashi was the type to be aroused by real-life women. The only women he's known for the past ten years, if Sakura's sources are accurate, are the succulent females that adorn the pages of his dirty orange books, pocket-size and the perfect tool for ignoring his students.

Sakura tries not to resent him. But it's a little late for such restraint when she's sitting at his table drinking his tea (which tastes like water) and watching him tap his mask with vague, uneasy hands before tugging it down. He angles his head away from her as he sips; props up his head with his left hand, fingers resting on his nose.

"So, what have you learned these past few months?" Kakashi asks after swirling down the last drops from his cup. He repositions the mask with great care.

"I've just taken the test on the reproductive system," his only female student informs him.

Paint-bold diagrams, flat and jarring, are recalled by Sakura. Her Sannin teacher etching the curve of a mammary gland with a manicured nail. A slight smirk on Tsunade's face as she points out the male organs. Detailed monologues on the life cycle, age, vitality…virility.

Sakura had absorbed it all.

There was one thing, however, that she hadn't quite sucked in like a sponge. It stays as a nettling particle lodged between pores. During the lesson, Tsunade's smirk had been followed by a frown as a head not-quite-overgrown with white fur had peered in and announced it was time for lunch. Sakura could've sworn she'd heard Tsunade mutter, "Damn those Jiraiya look-alikes."

It almost seems as if Tsunade misses that white fur more than Sakura misses those yellow spikes.

Sakura knows they love each other. She just doesn't know why they fold it under laughing pranks and stiff rebuttals. She doesn't understand why _they don't understand_ the urgency of their situation—how one day the snake that waits to cinch tight around their circle will squeeze until they writhe with pain.

But then, she's never understood love. Not the soft sighs or the flutter kisses or the burning eyes, not the raging blazing passions that her dates have professed, merciless in their smooth-tongued confessions.

She understands desire. After all, desire's just a result of libido and natural urges and the need to reproduce and all those other phrases that have to do with reason. But love, love has no logical explanation, no clever way to label and package it without sounding downright silly.

So Sakura does what she's always done when she doesn't understand, and makes up her own definition. Love is—

"Is that so?" Kakashi says. He meets her eyes without expression, and again his dirty secret comes to mind. Actually, it's the dirty secret that isn't really a secret, since he holds it up as a shield between himself and the rest of the world.

Those perverted novels by that perverted man who the perverted Hokage loves.

With a slight relish and a need to disturb, Sakura answers, "Yes. We used two corpses and I had to touch all the parts."

If Kakashi's bothered, it doesn't show. Instead, he arcs one eyebrow—the only one Sakura can see—and says, "That's an interesting method."

Sakura frowns. "What other method is there?"

After a pause, Kakashi replies, "I don't remember the medic-nin I used to work with mentioning that to me."

"You worked with a medic-nin? I thought Tsunade had just started sending medic-nins out with every team—"

"It was a long time ago."

The topic is closed. Draining her cup, Sakura decides it's time to get to the point, so she makes an off-hand comment.

"You know, it's my birthday today."

Flowers bought from the Yamanaka shop will be strewn all over the faded floorboards of her house. Once the sun has stumbled out of bed, there'll be a gaggle of relatives eager to bundle her up with wishes for her health and wrap her up in hopes for her prosperity. And when she refuses to remove the Konoha forehead protector from her hair that marks her as a full ninja of the village, she'll try not to notice the wary glint in their eyes or the calculated glitter of their smiles.

Kakashi has a comment of his own. "That's very fitting."

"How so?"

Sakura knows the answer, but she wants to hear it from Kakashi.

"Cherry blossoms appear in spring," he says.

"The cherry tree in my front yard hasn't flowered since Sasuke left."

There's no preamble before she deliberately mentions the unmentionable. It's as if they're carrying on some sort of conversation about the one who began the end for their team. Kakashi's one-eyed gaze doesn't falter, doesn't drop. But he doesn't say anything, either.

"Ino says that it won't bloom until I find another love."

It's the official, unbiased opinion of a horticulturist.

Kakashi has no response, so his former student tries again.

"Do you think she's right?"

His silence prompts her to offer her own opinion.

"I think it's kind of a ridiculous diagnosis, but I agree that it's odd behavior for a tree."

Kakashi blinks. Teeth nipping down her impatience, Sakura continues,

"Sasuke's been gone a long time. I loved him—_and I still do_—but he left. I know why—Tsunade's told me, but… It doesn't excuse anything. He didn't have to leave us. He didn't have to _become his brother_ in order to kill his brother. It'd be—it'd be like killing himself."

But he's always worn a death-wish around him like a cloak, a nasty voice whispers in Sakura's head. He's always had that suicidal bent, despite all his haughty talk about defeating "that man." Why do you think he nearly got himself killed countless times saving you and Naruto?

Sakura shakes her head free from the sharp voice and its sharp words. "But I've… I've forgotten that. I've grown in order to forget Sasuke, to forget how it felt when he left me on that bench and when he left Naruto and when we didn't hear anything of him. It's like scar tissue has grown over that part of my heart that was Sasuke."

Kakashi merely watches her and says nothing.

"Damn it, Kakashi, I've _grown_," Sakura explodes. "What in the name of the Kyuubi is wrong with you?"

There's resentment in that dark eye at the word "Kyuubi," and for a moment the eye narrows.

"There's nothing wrong except a heart too old to understand love," Kakashi says slowly.

A harsh laugh erupts from Sakura.

"It's the young that don't understand love," she tells him. "I thought I was in love with Sasuke, but I outgrew that. And though I'm not _in_ love with him now, I still love him, to the point that I would die for him. But it's not the type of love that can be affirmed with a rose. It's the type of love that teammates have."

If she stares hard enough, she can see that there's a slight twitch of his eye and a quiver of his mask.

"Liar," Kakashi says, voice a killing soft. "You can't outgrow love. You can't grow to forget it."

Sakura's eyes widen and her breath stops. As if to soften the blow, Kakashi extends a hand of placation.

"You must not understand love then, Sakura," Kakashi tells her gently, "because you are still young."

Sakura's smart. She hears the implication in his words. He knows why she's here. He's trying to ward her off.

But being intuitive doesn't stop her pale face from paling further. It doesn't halt the tightening of her lips as she says coolly, "Good night, Kakashi."

Her dress trails behind, sweeping her bitterness along with her.

"You're right that I must not understand love yet, Kakashi," Sakura says as she reaches the door.

Finger-pads on the icy knob, her head arches to face him.

"Because I could've sworn the day before that you loved me."

------

The moon glares hard and cruel as a weapon as it dangles before a bare cherry tree. Limbs outstretched, the naked wood is shorn.

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A/N: Lord Jim is a classic novel by Joseph Conrad. Reviews and concrit appreciated.


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